News
What's happening in robotics and AI — curated by the wujec.ai editors.
Six in ten humanoids shipped this year went to a stage or a data lab — not to a factory
Humanoid robots are shipping in numbers that finally look industrial: more than 22,000 units in the first half of 2026, close to 300% up year on year, according to Counterpoint Research. What those machines are bought for is a different story. Two categories still account for more than 60% of all shipments: entertainment and performance, and data production and research — that is, robots bought to appear in front of an audience, and robots bought to generate training data for the models that will one day operate them. Their combined share slipped moderately against last year, but it did not stop being the majority. The segments usually named as the point of the whole exercise remain small. Intelligent manufacturing rose to 13% of shipments; warehousing and logistics to 5%. The figures match what this catalogue has spent August writing about. The two humanoids that broke the 100 m record in Beijing were built to compete, not to work. EngineAI's T800 is the only machine admitted to a humanoid fight league in which every entrant is given identical hardware. DroidUp's Rena performs kunqu opera. None of that is a criticism of the machines — but it is a long way from the images of humanoids carrying parts down a production line that accompany most coverage of the sector. Counterpoint expects the balance to reverse, with service and industrial applications overtaking performance and data collection over the next five years, and total shipments passing 50,000 units in 2026. For now, the most common job for a new humanoid is to be watched.
Beijing's robot games quadrupled the machines on the floor — and 25 of the 666 teams come from outside China
The second World Humanoid Robot Games open in Beijing on 22 August and run to the 26th, at the National Speed Skating Oval. The organisers put the field at 2,056 robots entered by 666 teams from 16 countries on six continents. Against the first edition — 280 teams and just over 500 machines in August 2025 — that is 138% more teams and about four times as many robots. The same briefing contains a second set of numbers that is quoted far less often. Of the 666 teams, 641 are domestic: 157 Chinese companies plus 200 universities and research institutes. They bring 1,975 of the 2,056 robots. Subtract those and the entire foreign presence at the world championship comes to 25 teams and 81 machines — 3.8% of the field and 3.9% of the robots. Spread across the fifteen countries other than the host, that is under two teams each. The count of countries is the figure that did not move. The 2025 edition also drew 16. Everything that grew this year grew inside China: the number of entrants more than doubled, the number of nations stayed exactly where it was. The growth is also lopsided in a way worth naming. In 2025 the average team brought 1.8 robots; this year it brings 3.1. Teams are not merely more numerous, they arrive with deeper benches — which is what a manufacturing base looks like when spare units stop being precious. One caution on the headline growth rate. The deputy executive director, Jiang Guangzhi, said the robot count had doubled. Set against the officially reported 500-plus machines of 2025, 2,056 is a fourfold rise, and China Daily itself put the increase at 311% in a follow-up piece five days later. We use the underlying counts rather than either summary. The programme has widened too: alongside track and field, football, gymnastics, street dance and tai chi, this edition adds long jump, weightlifting, tug-of-war and table tennis, plus scenario events in industrial assembly, logistics, retail, hotel and family service, and firefighting and rescue. The 2025 edition ran 26 events. Note that these Games are a separate event from the World Robot Conference trade show, which ran in the same city earlier this month.
Unitree prices its IPO at 150.8 yuan — a humanoid maker valued at 219 times earnings
Unitree Robotics (Yushu Technology) has set the price for its Shanghai STAR Market listing at 150.8 yuan per share, according to the issuance announcement filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange under code 688836. The company is selling 40,446,434 new shares, about 10 percent of its enlarged capital, which raises roughly 6.1 billion yuan and implies a market capitalisation near 61 billion yuan — some 9 billion dollars. The pricing puts Unitree on a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 219.23, against a sector average of 38.56 quoted in the same filing. Public subscription opens on 10 August. Entities linked to DeepSeek and Tencent are listed among the strategic investors. Unitree would be the first humanoid-robot maker listed on a mainland Chinese exchange. The company reached that point on the back of quadrupeds such as the Go2 and a humanoid line running from the H1 through the G1 to this year's H2 — products that undercut Western competitors by an order of magnitude on price. The multiple the market has accepted says less about current profits than about how much of the humanoid industry investors expect Unitree to end up owning.
Unitree H2 →Unitree starts pricing its IPO — the first humanoid maker to list on China's A-share market
Unitree Robotics began preliminary price inquiries for its STAR Market flotation on Wednesday 5 August 2026, the step that sets the issue price before subscription opens on 10 August. The offer covers about 40.45 million new shares — 10 percent of the enlarged share capital — with a target of 4.2 billion yuan (roughly 0.6 billion US dollars). China's securities regulator approved the registration on 2 July, so barely a month passed between clearance and pricing. Valuation estimates diverge sharply: investment banks put the company at about 40 billion yuan after listing, while CCB International sees 60 to 100 billion, with an optimistic case of 109 billion. The numbers underneath are what make this more than a financing story. Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025 — first in the world by unit volume — and humanoids brought in 868 million yuan, 51.78 percent of total revenue. A company whose business was quadruped robots is now, by its own accounts, mostly a humanoid company. It will be the first embodied-intelligence firm on the A-share market. That gives the sector something it has lacked: a listed pure-play whose quarterly numbers are public, against which the shipment claims that circulate around this industry can finally be checked. wujec.ai catalogues four Unitree machines: G1, H1 Pro, H2 and the Go2 quadruped.
Unitree G1 →